facilitated by Emily Batista (UPenn)
Is there some resistance in libraries to social networking? Some sites (such as Facebook) are considered a "time suck." These are good ways to connect with colleagues or others with whom you have things in common. ALA and some libraries are also using social networking tools like second life.
How is the library using social networking sites? Most people in the room have an account on Facebook. How do you separate the personal from the professional? How can you use these resources to market library resources and services.
However, we should be aware of what the students and our users are using and figure out how to reach them.
Rutgers has a page that reaches out to their population quite often. There needs to be some regular activity from the library page that will bring people to the site or, ideally, to the library - either physically or virtually. But how much is too much?
Second Life at Penn is mostly for student projects. Participation there is a much smaller universe. How is this communicated to the students? The information commons does promotion for the site to faculty and students who might be interested in using it.
ALA, Drexel and SJSU have second life presences. What started as a research and collaborative tool is now being used for other purposes. There is a high tech-barrier and a high learning curve if you are not accustomed to video-game culture. Some subjects lend themselves to use of second life.
The many ways of communicating within facebook allows for reaching out in differnet ways. Use as a portal for chatting. How can chat be embedded within facebook without being associated with an individual user's account?
Abilene Christian University is giving iPhones to all students.
We can't dismiss the fact that our users are here. How do we keep our staff up to speed on these new technologies. We need to help our colleagues learn about these new tools. "It used to be this way with email." We need to get our staff on board with these technologies.
Twitter can give instant feedback on bibliographic instruction sessions. A faculty member at (?) allows his students to use twitter in class to provide instant feedback.
These tools are good for communication.
[Electronic document delivery and discovery platform implementation going on at Harvard - at the same time as layoffs where staff with expertise are going to leave.]
Do we have the "with it" librarians and those who aren't?
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